Why rebuild New Orleans?

You folks need to consider a few things. What if San Francisco got hit with the big quake? Should we abandon that too? Or Los Angeles or for that
matter the entire state of CA since just about any part of it could be devastated at any given moment.

And what about South Florida much of which is below sea level (more then New Orleans I might add). If this flooded during a major storm would we be
discussing abandoning this too?

How much are we willing to abandon because there are dangers involved in living there. Should we all locate to Lincoln Nebraska and just worry about a
tornado or two?

If any of you were truly informed about what is going on with the levy investigation you would know that the courts have declared the levy breaks as a
man made disaster because of their horrible construction and design by the Corps of engineers. They should have never broken if they had been built
even close to the standards we were told they were.

Rebuilding New Orleans is not an option but a MUST unless all of you are willing to start abandoning many other parts of the country as well using the
same flawed logic as I've been reading here.

New Orleans is special in so many ways. It makes living in this country under present circumstances tolerable. New Orleans could never be replaced!

Has anybody realized that New Orleans is a major economic city, serving
as a port to the Atlantic Ocean? In fact, it is the fifth largest port in the world, according to
Wikipedia, and the largest exporter of grain. Also, being on the gulf of Mexico, the petroleum imports must be huge.

New Orleans is also at the mouth of the Mississippi River, which has been and
still is a vital waterway to the Midwest economy. To lose the ocean port at the end of that waterway is a huge hit.

All the displaced people aside, it is an economic necessity to rebuild New Orleans.

Originally posted by bettyd643
You folks need to consider a few things. What if San Francisco got hit with the big quake? Should we abandon that too? Or Los Angeles or for that
matter the entire state of CA since just about any part of it could be devastated at any given moment.

Something that you're not considering is the fact that if Cali got hit by a huge quake it doesnt mean that the quake will happen over and over.
However with New Orleans the cold, hard, fact is that it will be hit by more hurricans. It's not a matter of if, it will happen. Everyone has to
understand that this disaster will happen over, and over, and over if people move back. Why move people back into a place that you know for a fact
will be the sight of the exact same devistation that you just witnessed? It really doesnt make any since.

About the refereces to tornado alley, of course you wouldnt abandon it. A tornado region is very different from a city below sea level, with a river
just waiting to pour into it. A tornado zone will always be hit, but its not going to devestate the whole city. It's not going to destroy every, or
anywhere near every house in the city. It's not going to flood the city and make it absolutely uninhabitable for weeks or months. The two places have
nothing in common and there's no way to fairly compare the two.

That being said, I truely understand how the people of New Orleans feel. If I had to leave my home id want to go back to. On the other hand one of the
responsibilities of the government is to keep us safe in the face of a disaster. I can't say that they live up to that responsibility but that doesnt
mean that we all should just ignore the fact that the danger is there.

It's all about money dudes. They wanna build a new las vegas down there so they can make big bucks off the cheap land and they can get the 'girls
gone wild' gang to stop by the casino, maybe for entertainment?

I realize that New Orleans wasn't always that way; and that the Mississippi didn't used to threaten it; but times have changed...this is the
inevitable result.

The people should leave forever and never look back.

NO NO. If they leave and never come back, then all the TRASH that we got here in Houston will NEVER leave.

I say rebuild it and wait for another hurricane to wipe out all the criminals and corruption. Then make them rebuild the city somewhere in Louisiana.

I don't want these people from NO in Houston anymore. All they're doing is trashing our city, causing social problems, and ruining the shakey image
that we have anyways.

I'm guessing that they dumped all those people on you guys because they figured that Houston is rich so they can afford to take on all these
problems.

Kinda sucks though because they didn't ask you did they?

I'm surprised that many people here haven't caught on to the proposed redevelopment plans for downtown NO, the casinos that will feed off the whole
Mardi Gras culture that the city has. Then there is talk of bringing in cruise ships because NO is a good port area so that those people can gamble
too. Sounds like a win-win for the elites in NO, the property developers, the White House as it is rumoured that NO may shift Rep from the Dems too.
The losers are the poor blacks and most of all Houston itself.

Originally posted by Delirious
Something that you're not considering is the fact that if Cali got hit by a huge quake it doesnt mean that the quake will happen over and over.
However with New Orleans the cold, hard, fact is that it will be hit by more hurricans. It's not a matter of if, it will happen. Everyone has to
understand that this disaster will happen over, and over, and over if people move back. Why move people back into a place that you know for a fact
will be the sight of the exact same devistation that you just witnessed? It really doesnt make any since.

That's a very lucid statement. Given that we (people) are working hard on screwing up the environment on planet Earth and causing the global warming
one way or another (regardless of what Bush wants you to believe), the probability of hurricanes increases dramatically, and New Orleans is just in
the right spot to be hit, with levees just waiting to break. There whole damn lake is there, too. I meant it is seriously a really bad location.

The nation needs the port of New Orelans, though. A lot of stuff is moved there, exports and all. So the port should be kept. And the city built
elsewhere.

For New Orleans to be rebuilt without the fear of the city being flooded again, they need to raise the city up in elevation. Tkae the city of
Galveston, Texas for example and what they did. Back in 1900 when the hurricane killed over 5000 people and flooded the city, the city was like New
Orleans, below sea level. After that hurricane they rebuilt the city higher on the island.

And from what I've been hearing, it would only take a Cat 3 to totally wipe out New Orleans.

1.It would take huge sums of mony to do.
2.The same thing would happen again (it's just a matter of time)
3.Many of the people who lived their probably wouldnt want to go back.
4.It just would never be the same again.

Maybe if it's lucky (before they start rebuilding) NO will get trashed bigtime by another hurricane this coming season and this whole rebuild thing
will become a moot point. I say let it become the next rain forest or something....give it back to nature. Then again, it and it's lake are a toxic
dump now.

P.S. - Feel very sorry for Houston. They didn't deserve the problem that got dropped in their lap.

Originally posted by Liquidus
No. We do not. Normally a city is built gradually, starting with a small village, then a small town, then a large town and so on...Urbanization will
naturally take its course from there.

Again, the formation of a city is a gradual process. The money involved in a massive scale project as such, and the re-location of people is
not realistic.

Sorry friend, but yes, we do. I guess you haven't heard of Columbia, Maryland. Columbia was designed and built rapidly, and in its
first ten years, went from 8k people to 50k people. That's pretty quick, I'd say.

I have read the argument that New Orleans shoudnt be rebuilt everyone who has agured this has failed to answer the most obvious question.

Where would the city be relocated to ?
Unless someone can come up with a viable answer to that question the idea of rebuilding New Orleans elsewhere isnt viable.

I think, my friend, that you've missed something even more obvious—the answer to your own question. Clearly, those who are advocating for not
rebuilding NO mean just what they say. Don't rebuild it, anywhere, ever. No relocation. Nothing. The want to let it go back to nature, and let its
one-time residents move to anywhere they want to move (just not back to NO).

Their suggestion is that there should never again be a NO. Not on the original site, not anywhere new. Nowhere. The end.

I mean 'they' as in the powers that be. Thought i mentioned that before?

Think about things, if this had been a white community, then things would have been a whole lot differant. Look at the all the facts within ATS.

If you looked at all those "facts" yourself, you would have seen the one that
showed that a disproportionate number of whites died than would be expected from the demographics of the city.

According to one source, the white population accounted for roughly 28% of the people in NO. That means that if NO only had a population of 1000
people, 280 of them would be white.

That said, that would mean if the storm killed equally, then if 1000 people were killed, 280 of them would be white. But, as it turns
out, 36.6% of the deaths were whites (as reported by the Louisiana DHHS. For those not good at math, that means that if Katrina killed
one thousand people in NO, 366 were white.

Not the 280 it should have been if Katrina killed “equally.”

You’re right, Biker, Katrina was one racist BIATCH! It just turns out she hates white people the most.

Seriously, though, your race card isn’t a trump, it’s a deuce, and you’ve already overplayed it. This question of rebuilding is about the
cost/benefit/risk analyses of disaster rebuilding. Is rebuilding NO worth the costs, given the risks?

Ok, I see what you all are saying (the ones that don't want to rebuild anywhere, ever).

I live in New Orleans, and have all my life except for a 6 month outing in Seattle, WA. I love this city dearly, even with all of it's screwed up
flaws, I love it the same.

As we all know, you can love something and not be around it. I have gone back and forth between saying "time to go" to "never gonna leave." I have
settled on time to go. There are a multitude of reasons. The city is below sea level, the levees are not going to be restored before this season. My
apartment is just getting the collapsed roof torn off (just in time for next season, eh?) The majority of people here are what I consider to be
decent, though sometimes its deep deep down inside where daylight never touches. There are now police security cameras here, people are mounting
"mosquitoes" here (www.teenrepel.co.uk...), and prices on apartments are skyrocketing. I'm 23, and I
can't see things falling apart here like this and see a reason to keep it going.

I would be considered a traitor to many in this city, but the time has come. The predictions for the number of storms this year are just as high as
last year, and I don't want to be here to go through this again. Plus how anyone can walk into one of these reopened shops that was looted or the
convention center without chills going through their bodies astounds me. Nothing is working here, insurance doesn't want to rebuild minus the ones
that want to hike their rates 52%. We would be so much better if we were protected adequately, but obviously that is not a priority with this
government, so we should see how everyone makes it without our oil coming through, without our grain going out, or our joie de vivre. We were left in
the dark too long, I don't see any possibility of rebuilding with that many unknowns.

I am currently involved with the repopulation back to New Orleans. I work with it every working day and hear about one thing or another every day
dealing with the aftermath of Katrina.

First and formost, is the simple facts of what was the "Devil" that took N.O. out in the first place. Granted, Katrina had something to do with it
but it still lie's in the fact of the levee system that is in tact right now. There has been an on going change to our planet forever. This doesn't
exclude N.O. to say the least. The whole demographic and geological aspect of this problem lays in what will be happening next during the Hurricane
seaon. The predictions for this year are as stagering as they were for last year's hurricane season. It will all point back to the same extenuating
circumstance of the Levee's and the current condition of the geographical tempriment of exactly what is happening to this part of the country.

1) North east Orleans parish area has been sinking more than any other place up to date. Since 1960 this area has sank approx. 4 ft and continues to
sink farther by at least 2in. every year.

2) If that were'nt enough, it turns out the the New Orleans east area also lays on a fault line that is actually allowing the present day land areas
to slide off to the South.

3) The abundance of the salt mines, oil refinerie' and off shore oil drilling, these are all thing's that take from the stabilities of the land and
give nothing in return to achieve the resistance nesseccary to maintain the structural level's needed to deem them safe and secure.

4) The levee's are one of my favorite areas of research and they leave very little left to be desired. In a recent story that I had to summerize ,
it states that the National Geological proffessor Dr. Dokkar states that the levee's are not and will not be ready for this hurricane season. With
that said by the good Dr. , he also states that the levee's them selves would never be able to even with stand a cat-3 at present seaon. He also
stated that the city of New Orleans and the entire state of Louisiana as a whole would be paying for the Levee's forever, they would never be able to
financially fix the problem due to the geographical state of Louisiana.Though I have read that there are a few people that have put some post's to
the effect of the levee's and want to stem the blaime to the Army Corp. of Engineer's, I don't think they could of forseen the magnitude of what
exact is taking place with the soil and the land of New Orleans.

I was hoping to get a chance to get to a thread such as this with so much annomousity and what not for the evacuee's of Katrina to Houston and the
blaime game that tends to happen after a catastrophy such as this , to be able to say that if you go back, there will, with all of certainty, be more
problems for New Orleans and the Flooding situations , could be for the duration of the existance of New Orleans.

My heart goes out to all the loving people of New Orleans and exspecially to all of you I have tried to help to get some of your live's back to some
kind of order,"God Bless."

www.cityofno.com

msnbc.com
Look for the story titled:
New Orleans East sinking faster than anywhere elsein the State,says geologists.

wwltv.com

Just thought I would leave you with a few sites that I view everyday dealing with the BNOB Commitee. (Bring New Orleans Back)

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